Vol. 7 No. 4 (April 1997) pp. 159-160. 

CANADA'S COURTS by Peter McCormick. Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1994. 219 pp. Paper C$19.95.

Reviewed by Mark E. Rush, Department of Politics, Washington and Lee University.
 

On the cover, CANADA'S COURTS is described as "a social scientist's ground-breaking account of the Canadian judicial system." While I can't say that the book actually lives up to this grand billing, I can recommend the work as a solid, thorough introduction to the Canadian judicial system. McCormick does a nice job of describing and analyzing the workings of Canada's judicial system within the broader framework of social science analysis of court systems more generally. Students who are new to the study of courts in general or Canadian courts in particular are bound to find McCormick's work quite useful.

A broad introductory chapter on "Courts, Law and Society" discusses the Common Law and fundamental elements of western law. In the following five chapters McCormick presents the ins and outs of the Canadian court system and the process of judicial appointment. He uses summary statistics on, for example, the impact of regionalism judicial attitudes, the nature, source and success rate of appeals, and the success rates of different types of parties that go to court. Overall, this presentation is clear and straightforward.

The final five chapters look at broad questions concerning judicial systems in general: judicial independence, judicial appointment processes, the use of precedent, the impact of "party capability" on success rates in the courts, the impact of judicial decisions and legal mobilization. McCormick offers thoughtful responses to the criticisms made of court systems by various scholars.

For example, in his chapter on judicial independence, he points out that the common law vision of absolute judicial independence that results in virtually no judicial accountability is unique. Furthermore, he offers a nice contrast to continental legal systems where the judicial system is independent but individual judges are subject to review by their senior colleagues.

In "Winning and Losing in Canada's Courts," McCormick applies Galanter's (1974) and Wheeler's (1987) analyses of "party capability" to show that the success rates of different types of litigants in Canada's courts is comparable to that in their American counterparts. In his chapter on the impact of judicial decisions, he provides a nice summary of Johnson and Canon's (1984) assessment of judicial impact and applies it to several representative Canadian Supreme Court decisions. In his conclusion, he offers a nice, provocative discussion regarding legal mobilization that challenges the reader to contemplate the extent to which courts really pose any problems for democratic accountability.

In sum, McCormick accomplishes what he sets out to do: "make the [Canadian] courts comprehensible to non-lawyers." His style is lucid, his bibliography is up to date and a solid basis for further inquiry. This is a concise work which will fit nicely into any comparative judicial course that has a Canadian component or an introductory course on Canada.
 

REFERENCES

Galanter, Mark. 1974. Why the 'Haves' Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change. LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW 9:95-160.

Johnson, Charles A. and Bradley C. Canon. 1984. JUDICIAL POLICIES: IMPLEMENTATION AND IMPACT. Washington, DC: CQ Press.

Wheeler, Stanton, Bliss Cartwright, Robert A. Kagan and Lawrence M. Friedman. 1987. Do the "Haves" Come Out Ahead? Winning and Losing in State Supreme Courts, 1870-1970. LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW 21:403-45.


Copyright 1997